This post is part two of a series. Find part one here.

A confession is often seen as the gold standard of evidence in a criminal case, leading to guilty verdicts even when there is no other evidence, when there’s a reason to think the confession was involuntary, and even when other evidence, like DNA, contradicts the story in the confession. Throughout the last four or five decades, scientists have learned a lot about the psychology of interrogations and confessions. But has that information trickled down to the public?

This multi-part blog post series uses data from a 2021 survey of the general public and their knowledge about police interrogations and false confessions. This survey compared the public’s knowledge to that of experts in the field: psychologists who have published empirical papers in peer-reviewed journals on these topics. The results showed that these two groups agree on certain information about interrogations and confessions. But a lot of the time, the public has ideas about these topics that go against what experts know from their research. This post presents a few key findings that experts want you to know.

It's a tantalizing idea that you could learn to tell if the person in front of you is lying or telling the truth. The invention of TV dramas like Lie to Me and Poker Face, as well as game shows like Would I Lie to You? show that the general public is interested in the phenomenon of detecting deception. But how good are people at actually being able to distinguish truth from lies, and can training help us improve?

In the 2021 survey, almost half (47.3%) of........

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